Susannah smiled and gave her a fierce, impulsive hug. She felt closer to Sam's mother than she had ever felt to her own.

Yank and Sam were both in the kitchen. Sam looked surprised when she walked in, as if he hadn't expected her to come with them. The sharp corners of the pink and purple triangles banged into the hollows beneath her ears.

"I don't know why you're making such a big deal of this," he said defensively. "It's just a meeting."

Instead of replying, she walked out to the car.

Mitch was already at the restaurant when they arrived. He had traded in his suit for dark brown slacks and a gold sport shirt. A Rolex gleamed in the sandy-brown hairs at his wrist. He stood as she approached, but made no attempt to hide his displeasure at her appearance. The men slid into the booth on each side of him. She took the seat on the end, keeping her back as straight as Grandmother Bennett's yardstick.

"This is supposed to be a business meeting, Sam," he said, nodding in her direction.

"That's why I'm here," she replied before Sam could answer.

The jukebox began to play a Linda Ronstadt hit. "Roberta isn't coming," Yank said abruptly.

Susannah gave him a sharp glance. Yank was hardly given to idle chatter, so he obviously wanted to make a point, but she had no idea whether he was indicating that she shouldn't be here either or whether he was making a distinction between the two women in her favor.

He began to draw an abstract figure in the moisture on the beer pitcher-another one of his diagrams. Did he design circuitry even in his sleep? she wondered. For the moment, it was easier to watch Yank's finger than deal with the tension that permeated the booth.

A circle appeared. A transistor maybe?

Two dots. A curve.

Yank had drawn a happy face.

"So… did you take a job with IBM yet?" Sam's voice snapped with sarcasm.

"I've been asked," Mitch replied as the waitress approached with the pizzas he had ordered. "Actually, I've had a number of interesting offers in the past few weeks. A lot of high-tech companies, naturally, but Detroit, too. And the soft drink people have been pretty persuasive." As they ate, he detailed several of his offers, including one from Cal Theroux at FBT.

Sam listened with increasing impatience, then pushed away his pizza and leaned back in the booth. "Sounds safe. Safe and predictable."

Mitch gave him a long stare. "It's a miracle that you've managed to keep SysVal alive this long. You don't know anything about selling a product. You don't have any organization, any definable market. Your company is so eccentric that it's a joke." He went on and on, detailing their shortcomings until Sam's mouth had tightened in a grim line and Susannah felt as if someone was banging her head into the wall. Yank drew three more happy faces.

Finally, Sam had had enough. He wadded up his paper napkin and tossed it down on the table. "If we're such a joke, then why did you come back, you son of a bitch?"

For the first time, Mitch seemed to relax. A smile spread slowly over his broad, good-looking face. "Because you hooked me. You hooked me good. SysVal is all I've been able to think about since I went back to Boston. I told myself I needed a vacation. I've tried to take some time off. But nothing's worked."

Sam sat slowly upright, his expression cautious, afraid to hope. "Are you telling me-"

"I'm in." Mitch shook his head. "For better or worse, I'm in all the way."

Yank smiled. Sam let out a whoop that startled one of the waitresses so badly she dropped a pie.

"That's great! God, that's really great!"

"We have to deal first," Mitch said, holding up his hand. "I have some conditions."

Sam could barely contain his excitement. "Name them."

"I want an equal partnership with you and Yank. Each of us takes one third of SysVal. In return, I'll guarantee a $100,000 line of credit at the banks. That'll keep us away from the venture capitalists for a while." He opened a leather folder he had brought with him and pulled out a gold pen. "Yank, you have to leave Atari. The SysVal I is only a toy. Our future is locked up in that prototype you're building, and you have to commit to it full-time."

"I like Atari," Yank said. "I have this new game coming out in a couple of months."

"Are you crazy?" Sam exclaimed. "This is a hell of a lot more important than a goddamn video game."

"I don't know about that, Sam," Yank replied earnestly. "It's one heck of a good game."

Sam rolled his eyes to the ceiling and turned to Mitch. "I'll take care of him. I promise."

Mitch began to discuss contingencies, eventual strategies for venture capital, a marketing plan, but Susannah didn't hear anything more. All the muscles in her torso seemed to have contracted into tight, painful bands. At the same time, her legs were rubbery and her pulse was beating much too fast. On and on they went-their exclusive male chatter cutting her out and pushing her aside like a whore who has been well-used and is no longer wanted. She drew herself up and tried to calm her heartbeat, but her voice was unsteady. "What about me?" she said.

Sam immediately grew cautious. "Let's talk about this later."

No scenes, Susannah. Be good. Be polite. The voices of the past whispered their earnest cautious messages. But she had learned brashness from Sam Gamble, and she pushed the voices away. "No. I think we need to talk about it now, since this concerns everyone here."

Mitch crossed his arms over his chest and looked irritated. "Another item on my list of conditions, Sam. Keep your woman troubles away from the company."

Susannah could feel her cheeks burning. Sam put all his weight on one hip and pulled Yank's car keys from his opposite pocket. "Look, Suzie. Take the car. I'll meet you at home in a couple of hours and we'll go over this."

"No!" She found herself on her feet, standing at the end of the booth and glaring down at the three of them. A pulse throbbed in her neck beneath skin as tight as a drumhead. She was dizzy and reckless with anger, uncaring of the scene she was creating for the people in the neighboring booths. "None of this is satisfactory to me, Mr. Blaine. None of it."

He waved his hand dismissively. "Miss Faulconer, I-"

"I've got the floor now, and it's my turn to talk. Sam seems to have forgotten to give you one important piece of information. If you intend to work with him, you need to know that he's quite brilliant in defining the big picture, but abysmal when it comes to details. He should have told you that tending to the details has been my job. Like finding the money to build those first forty boards. And paying our bills. And making certain dealers took us seriously when we went to Atlantic City. The fact is, Mr. Blaine, SysVal wouldn't exist today if it weren't for me."

She looked first at Sam and then at Yank, daring them to contradict her. Sam was scowling and Yank was studying the beer pitcher. Neither of them said anything.

"Vision isn't enough to run a company, and neither is genius. A company needs somebody to do the work, somebody to see to the everyday details, somebody to get the job done. That person has been me. And if any of you-if any one of you-thinks he's going to cut me out now, he's grossly mistaken."

Sam looked down at the table, refusing for the first time since she had known him to meet her eyes. Only Mitch met her gaze directly. He was tough. She could see that. And his stiff, starchy exterior hid the instincts of a street fighter.

"Aren't you being a little melodramatic, Miss Faulconer? Perhaps you'd better separate your romantic difficulties from company business," His voice was silky with condescension.

She had no one to help her. Only herself. Her intelligence and her guts. If she didn't stand up to this man right now, he would gun her down and leave her for dead. "This has nothing to do with my personal relationship with Sam. You've deliberately ignored me from the beginning, but you're not going to do it again. I told you that Sam wasn't good with details, so I'm not surprised that he seems to have forgotten to discuss one of those details with you."

"And what's that?"

"SysVal already has a binding three-way partnership agreement. And I'm one of those three partners."

Sam's head shot up. She saw consternation in his face, and realized that he had actually forgotten about the piece of paper she'd thrust under his nose that afternoon before they'd gone to Atlantic City.

"We all signed it, Mr. Blaine-even though one of us seems to have forgotten." She didn't mention that the paper hadn't been witnessed, that it probably wasn't legal at all, that the socialite was once again trying to pull a hustle.

"I see."

Her voice had begun to shake ever so slightly. "I'm not just Sam's tootsie, Mr. Blaine, as you seem determined to believe. Whether you like it or not, I'm the president of SysVal."

"That title doesn't mean anything!" Sam exclaimed. "We were just using the Faulconer name on those business cards. It was your idea."

"And without my name on those business cards, we wouldn't exist today."

Sam's arm shot out across the table. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her roughly down on the seat. His eyes were hard, glittering with anger. "You're going to ruin this for us, you know that? You're going to fucking ruin everything. What difference does it make how we divide things up? If you and I get married, what difference does it make?"

The pain was so sharp, she had to close her eyes for a moment. A knife, diamond-edged and lethal, sliced through her. She wanted to buckle over and curl into a tiny ball. Whenever she had wanted to talk about their feelings for each other-about their future together-he had evaded her. Now he was using marriage as a bargaining chip to manipulate her, as a carrot to dangle in front of her so she would do as he wished. Her body managed to feel both cold and hot at the same time. For the first time, she wondered if SysVal was worth it.

Yank spoke, apropos of nothing. "If I leave Atari, I won't have any health insurance."

His interruption gave her the chance to steady herself. Later. She would think about Sam's emotional betrayal when she was alone. For now she would force herself to separate the personal from the professional, just as men had been doing for centuries. Like a child playing in a sandbox, she would bury every one of her feelings to be retrieved later.

Sam's fingers had loosened on her wrist. She drew away from him, then crossed her hands on the table to keep them steady. She forced herself to forget about Sam, to concentrate only on Mitchell Blaine. "You have the reputation and the experience we lack. On the other hand, we have something you need. I've studied your career, Mr. Blaine. Sometimes you've been a bit too bold for your employers, haven't you? It must be frustrating to have some of your most innovative ideas curbed by men who are more conservative than you."

She thought she saw a flicker of surprise, and she pressed her point home. "At SysVal, you'll find the aggressive, creative climate you've been looking for-something to relieve that boredom that's been bothering you. Because of our inexperience, we don't have preconceived notions of how things have to be done. We have a chance to build a humane, progressive company from the bottom up-a company that cares about people as well as its product. The three of us would very much like to have you as a fourth partner, Mr. Blaine; however, as president of this company, I have some conditions of my own."

Sam made a small exclamation, but she ignored him. "Your offer of a $100,000 line of credit with the banks is generous, but not quite generous enough if you want an equal partnership. I handle the books, Mr. Blaine, and we're going to need double that if we want to put the self-contained computer on the market without going to the venture capitalists right away. I'd also like to see you toss in $25,000 of your own money as soon as possible to show good faith and get us out of our immediate cash bind." She turned to Yank. "Is that agreeable with you?"

Yank nodded vaguely.

"Sam?" She forced herself to look at him.

He had clamped his teeth together so tightly that a pale rim had formed around his lips. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Mitch is holding all the cards. We're not in any position to bargain with him."

"That's not true. This is our company. As much as we may want him to be part of it, we have the final say. Isn't that correct, Mr. Blaine?"

"Up to a point, Miss Faulconer. But only to a point." His voice was soft, barely above a whisper, but it conveyed a cold authority. "Without me, you won't have a company much longer."